During World War II he was a prisoner of war in Silesia with other officers of the French Army. One of the friendships he formed there was with author and literary critic Armand Hoog.

In 1950 he published in the Empédocle review a fierce attack on contemporary literary culture and literary prizes. When he won the Prix Goncourt for The Opposite Shore (Le Rivage des Syrtes) in the following year, he remained consistent with his criticism and refused the prize.

In 1989, Gracq's work was published by the very prestigious Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. He remains distant from major literary events and remained faithful to his first editor José Corti. He taught history and geography in highschool until he retired in 1970.

In 1932, he read André Breton's Nadja which deeply influenced him. His first novel, The Castle of Argol is dedicated to that surrealist writer to whom he devoted a whole book in 1948.

He wrote the foreword of the 1979 reedition of the Journal de l'analogiste (1954) by Suzanne Lilar which he viewed as "Une initiation somptueuse à la poésie".